Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with soaked bread, suet, molasses, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the bread in milk overnight.

  2. Drain any excess milk in the morning.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl over warm water, mix the bread with suet, molasses, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and vinegar.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 5 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the liquid to hold its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during the long bake.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown during baking.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven. A low, slow bake at 300°F lets the bread and suet set gently and the dense mixture cook through without scorching the outside. Too high a heat would brown the surface before the centre sets.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, molasses, sugar, raisin, clove, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, molasses, sugar, raisin, clove, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes